Dissolution is a brilliant masterpiece by the renowned novelist C.J. Sansom. It is set in the reign of Henry VIII, the king of England who ruled for nearly 56 years. The story of the book starts around 1536 AD when the chief minister of Henry VIII and the Earl of Essex, Thomas Cromwell, persuaded the King to break all ties with Rome and declare himself as the head of the ‘Chruch of England’, and the representative of God on Earth.
This decision set the foundation of Protestantism in England, leading to a huge chain of events, including the mass dissolution of Catholic monasteries in England overseen by the chief minister, Thomas Cromwell.
The story starts when Robin Singleton, a commissioner sent to the monastery of Scarnsea, to initiate a dialogue with the abbot and other monks in the monastery regarding its dissolution, is found brutally murdered. Matthew Shardlake, a lawyer at Lincoln’s Inn, and a supporter of the protestant movement, who is also the main character in the ‘Shardlake Series’, is ordered to go to Scarnsea by Cromwell to investigate and find the murderer.
He proceeds on his journey to Scarnsea along with his friend and manservant, Mark. On reaching the monastery he gets a very strange feeling. The whole place has a blanket of mystery around it, which gives him a very eerie feeling.
Once you start reading this book, you would be hooked to it and it would be very difficult for you to put it down till you finish it. It is not just about the murder, but also the whole tension in the air regarding the uncertainty of the future of the monasteries in specific and the country in general. A very tense and conflicting environment is present throughout the whole book between the monks and Shardlake, both supporters of two different and conflicting faiths.
‘Dissolution’, in its main storyline, is fiction. But one can’t call it complete fiction as the broad set of events on which the book is based are completely real. The character Matthew SHardlake is of course fictional. But the King, the chief minister Thomas Cromwell, and a few other major personalities, who have little to do with the main storyline, are completely real. This book is a must-read for every history lover, who also loves murder and the mystery surrounding it!